Microsoft Hits Back Against Critics by Flaunting Big Numbers

Of late, Microsoft has been having somewhat of a rough time. On the Mobile space, Apple rocked the world this year with the iPad and the iPhone 4 and Google is making steady inroads with Android, while Microsoft is yet to release Windows Phone 7. Even on the web, Microsoft is struggling to make a breakthrough. In fact, the Redmond based giant’s online division has been bleeding money, even as it continues to try and play catch up. Microsoft remains restricted to its traditional stronghold thanks to the dominance of Windows and Office.

Stung by the criticism, Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Corporate Communications, hit back by flaunting the numbers. Amidst all the iPhone and iPad frenzy, it’s quite easy to forget that Microsoft still remains a behemoth that is still doing an incredible job at raking in money.

Here’s a synopsis of the numbers touted by Shaw.

Windows 7: It is the fastest growing OS in the history with 150,000,000 copies sold so far.

PC: While people are busy forecasting the death of the PC, they are still forgetting that the projected PC sales (for 2010) dwarf the iPad and Netbook sales. 355 million PCs are expected to be sold this year, compared to 7.1 million iPads and 58 million Netbooks.

Netbooks: Speaking of Netbooks, this is another market Microsoft dominates. 96% of Netbooks sold in the US run on Microsoft Windows.

Server Market: While the Server market is not amongst Microsoft’s strong points, Linux hasn’t been doing too well either. Its current market share is 21.2%, down from 24% in 2005 and significantly less than the 33% market share it was predicted to achieve by 2007.

Office: 9,000,000 is the total number of customer downloads of the Office 2010 beta.

Xbox Live: With 23 million Xbox Live subscribers, Microsoft outnumbers both Netflix and the largest 25 US daily newspapers combined.

Bing: Bing has also been slowly making progress and gained 21.4 million new users in one year.

Windows Live Hotmail: Hotmail is an oft ignored and frequently derided online property, but it is still a market leader. Hotmail has 360 million users compared to 173 million and 284 million Gmail and Yahoo! users respectively. In fact, with 299 million active Windows Live Messenger accounts, WLM is the most popular instant messaging service in the world.

Net Income: Apple may have passed Microsoft in the market caps, but Microsoft’s net income of $14.5 Billion is still a lot more than Apple’s ($5.7 Billion) or Google’s ($6.5 Billion) net income. Microsoft’s total revenue has also grown from $23.0 billion in 2000 to $58.4 billion in 2009.

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Pallab De

Pallab De is a blogger from India who has a soft spot for anything techie. He loves trying out new software and spends most of his day breaking and fixing his PC. Pallab loves participating in the social web; he has been active in technology forums since he was a teenager and is an active user of both twitter (@indyan) and facebook . View all posts by Pallab De